9 dead in South Carolina Church shooting:

[marceline]

I'm ambivalent. I love seeing people fight back against the worship of the confederacy that that feels a bit too close to grave desecration for me. I'm all for attacking the symbols of oppression like the flag but spray painting memorials is farther than I could personally go. Maybe it's also seeing some lovely artwork defaced.

[Eric83]

I think as the nation healed from the war the South and North reconciled and the Antebellum South began being romanticized. Clubs like the Daughters of Confederacy purchased these statues to honor the fallen soldiers of the Old South. I think the rampant racism and ignorance of the time toward blacks made this OK. The North and South viewed the blacks as the problem. If you look at footage from the Union and Confederate soldiers gathering to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Gettysburg there was not one black soldier in sight. It has only been in recent years that the flag has been challenged. I was so happy when my state Georia dropped it from the state flag. They were MAD.

[ReddFoxx]

These are monuments erected to honor people who started a war because they were too lazy to work or too cheap pay for labor. I'm not sad to see them get defaced.

[quartermainefan]

And maybe this will be one of those events people will read in history books 100 years from (assuming there are still books that is). It took this murder to bring that flag down and I guess that shows that SC society was shocked into seeing a wrong and had the good sense to correct it--finally.

On another note, the statue says it is dedicated to the confederate defenders of Fort Sumpter. I am no Civil War buff, but I thought Fort Sumpter was attacked by the Confederates and that is what started the war, no? I have to go watch Ken Burns again, that was a great documentary.

[MoTheGreat]

Are we really surprise that black people got killed in their church? The only thing different they invited him in. Are we forgetting the four little black girls who got bomb.

That church had a history of it's members getting killed.

[Wales2004]

I am sorry I misunderstood what you said.

Right now I don't happen to believe that most black people live in poverty due to racism. Just because of my own personal experiences I see it as more of a toss-up. I lived in the same neighborhood as a few gang members for part of my childhood. They were in two different gangs. They would go out and start trouble which would result in drive-bys and frequent police visits. I was caught in the middle of them and the police at least a couple of times and it wasn't until I was older that I understood how many times I and others could have been shot or even killed because of their idea of fun.

People were poor in the neighborhood but the parents did their best to provide these guys with homes and they didn't have to starve and instead of trying to follow those examples, they opted for street life. They chose paths that would ruin their lives, they cut class, got busted for petty crimes, and their friends who got tired of it eventually turned themselves around. Their sisters (except one who went to nursing school) all became teenage mothers who had multiple kids. They didn't believe in struggling like their parents.

Sure racism is a problem, but some people are totally unmotivated and have no intention of doing anything. Unfortunately those who are irresponsible are always going to get lumped in with those who want to do better but are held back because of racism simply, because it's easier to lump everyone together and blame race than to deal with problems on an individual basis. People will continue to be short-changed because of this lazy approach to labeling people.

[Eric83]

There was a second battle of Fort Sumter in the fall of 1863 when the Union failed to recapture it from the Confederates. You're right, the people in these communities can not be generalized. It is a mixture of external and internal factors. What annoys me most is the people who shame the "ghettos" and don't even understand why they exist in the first place. Smh.

[MoTheGreat]

A study shows that it doesn't matter how many degree blacks has, they still the first to get fire last to get hire. & they don't have a police record.

White people with police records get jobs.

[alphanguy74]

Usually people who know how to construct sentences and are willing to work get jobs. Every single person I know that is unemployed is unemployed for a good reason.

[Wales2004]

All these oversimplifications make bw race discussions a total waste of time. They all make black people out to be singular and white people to be multifaceted. And they're all doom and gloom for black people. Black people are not going to graduate from high school, get a college degree, get a job, live long, survive police encounters. Black people are going to die of all the dreadful diseases, end up in prison, be victimized by racism 24-7, and every other awful thing.

It's a good thing my grandmother was semi-illiterate because if she read about the horrific life she was going to have then she might have given up on the spot and all those doomed children she had wouldn't have worked at anything. Then again, back in those days she wouldn't have been wasting time as I so luxuriously do so who am I to complain? I will never go through a fraction of what she or any of some of those other old timers did.

If only. Bias, favoritism, jealousy, college connections, etc., may be part of the mix as well. Being able to construct sentences isn't all that important at ESPN, and other sport networks and for certain jobs requiring manual labor. I think it is preferable to have in jobs that require written and verbal communication though.

[ChitHappens]

Must be nice to not have to wear that heavy white sheet all the time:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/24/bill-chumley-charleston-shooting_n_7653182.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

[ReddFoxx]

If you look at extremely impoverished white areas in Kentucky, Ohio or Virginia around the coal mining regions, you will see a lot more drug use and violence among whites than you do in areas with better incomes. Blacks tend to be disproportionately poor and lower incomes tend to have higher rates of crime. It's more about income than race.

[Eric83]

Alabama governor removes all Confederate flags from the Capitol grounds

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/24/politics/alabama-governor-confederate-flags/index.html?sr=fb062415confederateflags12pVODtopLink

While I am happy that this tragedy is finally bringing attention to the worship and idolatry of the Confederacy, I hope this doesn't negate from the underlying issue of these murders. I will say thought that I hope the momentum keeps going and more Confederate memorials and flags are taken down across the South. There is no country that has flags from a failed rebellion hanging on federal buildings.

[Wales2004]

Politics from state to state can be amazing. The Alabama governor can just quietly have a flag removed from the state building but in South Carolina there has to be a vote held in order to remove that flag and it is not even the state flag.

Emmanuel AME"s bible study is probably going to be such an emotional event for the participants.

[marceline]

I don't think it will. Rev. Pinckney's funeral is Friday and Obama is going. I think that the focus will return to the victims then.

IMO, taking down the confederate rag has become so important because it's something concrete and tangible and because these murders made people see how truly damaging it and the values it represents, is to our country. It's also an easy thing for the media to report on but don't believe for one second that most of us have forgotten what it took to make this happen: the senseless slaughter of nine people by a white supremacist.